COLUMN: On football from the couch

I’m on the couch. The question occurred to me, being the existential Monday morning quarterback that I am: Was there really a loser in Sunday’s Super Bowl?

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Waynesboro Record Herald - Waynesboro, PA

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Posted Feb. 6, 2013 at 10:30 AM

Posted Feb. 6, 2013 at 10:30 AM

I’m on the couch.

The question occurred to me, being the existential Monday morning quarterback that I am: Was there really a loser in Sunday’s Super Bowl?

These and other questions floated in and out of my conscious and subconscious mind as I slipped into a Super Bowl coma Sunday night.

You know the macho slogan that has been passed from generation to generation like an old pair of shoes from your great-great grandfather’s attic, the one with the soles worn out from overuse because he couldn’t afford another pair of shoes. “No one remembers who finished second.” “Nice guys finish last.” “Every time you lose, you die a little.”

Of course, there really was a loser.

But, at the same and fleeting moment they lost the Super Bowl — the San Francisco 49ers — were still the champions of the National Football Conference. That now overlooked accomplishment makes them essentially winners. But, in sports, there can be only one winner. They lost the only game that counts.

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Sports, like many things in life, have been reduced — I say, reduced, because, rather than focusing on the means to the end, competition has been enlarged to show a rough though undeniable texture that it doesn’t matter how to get there, just get there, baby — to an obsession of being at the top, sometimes at any cost. Who cares? As long as you get a ‘W.’

The apex of professional football is the Super Bowl, an odd name for a championship game but one given to make the game appealing, rather than calling it the NFL-AFL Championship Game, or, more currently, the NFC-AFC Championship Game. They added roman numerals to make it look even more dignified. Now they charge millions of dollars for 30-second advertisements, which themselves have become a part of the game as much as the game itself.

But football isn’t dignified. It’s downright brutal. That’s why we love it. That’s why we crave it. That’s why we can’t live without it. We glory in vicarious violence. Look at the mass following of UFC, boxing, NASCAR crashes, baseball and basketball brawls. We bask in the thrill of the moment when grown men all but maim each other while children watch with their parents and would rather, as unfathomable as it sounds, rather be in bed fast asleep.

Some call it goal-setting. Others call it a quest for greatness, a search for excellence. Frankly, I’ve grown weary of the romanticized view of sports. It has nothing to do with pride or principle, but about motivating one’s self to do things his body can’t do under normal conditions. Competition doesn’t make someone a better person, just like choosing to be something other than an athlete doesn’t make you less of a person.

Page 2 of 3 - Nevertheless, it’s something that anyone who has been cast under the spell of vintage NFL Films programs can understand. Or reading Jerry Kramer’s “Instant Replay.” It’s a hyptotic allegience that we Americans have bestowed upon this game we call American football, an offshoot of rugby that so long ago was nearly abolished but given a reprieve after measures were taken to make the game safer.

But when the final whistle blows, and the dust clears, what is left? A renewed search for greatness after the brief afterglow of another game, which happens to conclude another season, which happens to morph into another off-season of afterthoughts, forethoughts and ponderings of: what is this all about afterall?

After all, there is a life after football. For many, it’s not much of a life at all.

The game has endured and shows no signs of fading into the recesses of American history in spite of voices from the past and present sounding the alarm of impending doom brought on by the ‘C’ word and, frankly, by how the game is played. Think that will change anything? No. Because the game is played at such a high rate of speed which physics professors could expound on with gusto — mass plus force times velocity at a given point, creating a flashpoint, or collision, between two (or more) animate moving objects. In layman’s terms, we call this full contact. In reality, it’s disaster waiting to happen.

The human body is not built for football. Just ask anyone who has suffered a knee injury, or any injury for that matter. Football is another example of man’s fascination with self-destruction. However, it is unlike man’s obsession with testing the limits of human expansion, like flight or space exploration. The new American pastime is about expressing physical rage and dominance against an opposing force and calling it a sport.

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There was chatter about player safety, the bane of performance enhancing substances, the olive branch to football widows everywhere in the form of the halftime show as well as white noise on any number of subjects and issues related to — and not related to — this game we call American football.

The rhetoric of it all is mind-numbing and nauseating. Making football safer? The only way to solve the problem is to eliminate the cause of it. That won’t happen. Helmet makers will continue to outproduce flag makers. Doctors and lawyers will continue to rake in much money. The NFL will continue to make obscene profits. Players will continue to suffer the consequences of playing a game people can’t live without.